KOL (Key Opinion Leader) Marketing

We’ve written about influencer marketing plenty of times on our blog. That’s because it is one of the most effective tools for social media marketing. It can help you boost your reach, increase engagement, and improve your sales in the long run. However, influencer marketing isn’t the only way to promote your brand on social media. There are plenty of other ways to do that. Employee advocacy is also a pretty popular way of improving brand recognition. This happens when companies team up with their staff members to create unique social media campaigns. But that’s a story for another day. In today’s post, we will talk about Key Opinion Leader marketing and its recent popularity…

What’s KOL Marketing?

While influencer marketing leverages people from all walks of life – no matter how much or little they know about a certain subject – Key Opinion Leader marketing uses experts only. In influencer marketing, the personality of the influencer is what catches the attention of the followers. While they’re fans of the influencer’s content, too, their personality is what keeps the followers hooked. In KOL, things are a little bit different. This innovative marketing technique uses people who have a lot of knowledge of a certain subject matter and who are considered opinion leaders in their niche. Their audience wants to know what they think about different topics and news in their niche. The opinion of the KOL highly influences the opinion of the follower. You see where we’re going with this.

What Are The Benefits Of KOL Marketing?

When it comes to benefits, KOL marketing provides the same benefits as influencer marketing. However, it engages a specific niche. If you’re looking to show off your products in front of a large and diverse audience, you won’t find it here. The main secret behind the success of KOL marketing is trust. Trust, built by years of sharing thought-provoking pieces online, creating hours upon hours of material, and analyzing certain subject matters in ways no one else has even thought of. Although this may sound overly serious, another benefit of KOL marketing is that it’s versatile; every niche has its opinion leaders. From fitness and cooking to entertainment and tech. You can find a person others are eager to hear speak in every niche imaginable.

How To Use KOL Marketing To Your Benefit

All of this sounds great, but you’re still wondering how to implement KOL in your existing marketing strategy. How can you find a person – a KOL if you will – that will cover all of the basis. Here are a couple of things you need to consider when trying KOL marketing for the first time:

• The Relevancy of the KOL: How much does the KOL have to do with your industry? Will their followers be interested in your product offering and brand as a whole?
• The Reach of the KOL: How many followers does the KOL have? Are you looking for some with a large audience or can you use a small but loyal following?
• The Engagement Rate of the KOL: How much do the followers like, share, and comment? If the KOL doesn’t have many followers, the ones they have should be highly engaged.

The Bottom Line

Now you know how KOL marketing works. Some of you might notice that KOL works similarly to word-of-mouth advertising. You’re right. However, KOL has shown to be much more viable to new businesses. You see, for word-of-mouth to work, you need a good number of people already listening. To make organic word-of-mouth work, you need the audience KOL has to offer.

Tags: Influencer Marketing, Key Opinion Leader, KOL, KOL Marketing