Looking to make waves in the lucrative Chinese market? A KOL marketing campaign should be at the forefront of your strategy. Certainly, in the Fashion, Luxury, and Beauty (FLB) industries, consumers depend on KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) for brand and product recommendations.
While choosing the right KOL to collaborate with is the first step toward a successful KOL marketing campaign, the next stage is where the hard work really begins. Brands must continually measure performance to maximize ROI on both current and future efforts.
But how can you measure your results both consistently and effectively? By sourcing the most paramount data and utilizing the most appropriate digital tools.
We get it – it’s easier said than done – which is why we’ve broken it down for you. Here are our three tips for measuring your next KOL marketing campaign.
In this article you’ll learn…
1. KOL marketing and media mentions
To accurately measure the success of your influencer marketing campaign, you need total control over your online mentions. Otherwise, you’ll have an incomplete picture of the depth and breadth of your campaign’s reach.
Manually tracking mentions is both time-consuming and ineffective. With a tool like Launchmetrics Insights, you can easily see the performance of all your Voices (including KOLs) by channel and region, with data displayed in an attractive dashboard. The software tracks all posts and mentions for you. It even calculates the ROI earned from each mention, giving you your brand’s Media Impact Value™ (MIV®).
Real-time performance
Seeing all your online and social media mentions in real-time is a game-changer for any marketing strategy. It’s something that can only be achieved with media monitoring technology.
Imagine, each morning, being greeted by a bespoke newsletter that has collated all of your brand mentions by Voice, channel, and country – all collected in one tool and published directly to your inbox!
But that’s not all. What if one of your campaigns involves collaborating with several KOLs? Results can be trickier to pull together and your manager will want to see the fruits of such complex labor. However, with the ability to tag and filter all your campaign mentions under a common keyword or hashtag, your team can access the insights immediately at just the click of a button.
Furthermore, by using our ‘export campaign report’ option, you can offer your team an up-to-date mention summary and a picture of your overall performance.
It’s crucial you don’t miss a single mention once your KOL marketing campaign has launched. That’s why a one-stop-shop tool is essential to achieving desired results.
CASE STUDY: Lancôme X BE@RBRICK
In 2022, Lancôme collaborated with BE@RBRICK and launched a ‘CALL ME HAPPY’ pop-up space. The beauty experience took place in Shanghai and Guangzhou.
To promote the campaign, Lancôme strategically selected KOLs whose collective MIV® contribution reached more than ￥71,000. Using Launchmetrics Insights to track every campaign mention, we found that @ShanghaiBANG, the number one KOL, generated ￥26,000 in MIV®.
This impressive figure was achieved through just one promotional video, which received 2.2K likes across Weibo and WeChat.
2. Measure ROI with a standardized metric
Throughout your KOL marketing campaign, you’ll want to track metrics such as your brand or product mention count. You’ll also need the engagement data of each mention.
Understanding how much those mentions and the resulting engagement pay off is where it gets tricky. How can you accurately evaluate the ROI each influencer is bringing your brand when the forms of engagement vary across platforms?
The solution is to measure your campaigns using a standardized metric. That way, you can directly compare ROI across mentions to assess which KOLs and platforms are genuinely performing the best.
Your media impact matters
Launchmetrics’ Media Impact Value™ (MIV) is a proprietary algorithm that calculates a directly comparable dollar value for all media placements and mentions. With this, you can easily measure the ROI of your marketing activity.
You can compare the ROI of different influencers and measure cross-channel performance globally. Brands can even benchmark results against competitors (more on that below).
A standardized metric is the secret weapon for any marketing team that’s serious about tracking and measuring KOL campaigns.
3. KOL campaigns and the competition
Competitive benchmarking adds a new dimension to campaign measurement as it shows you where your brand sits in the competitive landscape.
With this information, you can learn from your competitors. Many use the knowledge to identify key opportunities and avoid missteps they spot in fellow brand campaigns.
For example, let’s say you and a competitor partner with the same KOL. By comparing the MIV® of both brands’ campaigns, you can directly assess who was the most successful. If your competitor received a higher ROI, you can note down and replicate any strategies in future partnerships.
Benchmarking your results against that of your competitors allows you to better understand brand performance and optimize your marketing spend to boost your position.
Are you serious about KOL marketing?
How do you currently track and measure your KOL marketing campaigns in China? Are you leveraging the right tools to get the full performance picture?
Find out more about Launchmetrics Insights today and take the guesswork out of tracking and measuring your KOL/influencer marketing campaigns.
Are you ready for full KOL campaign transparency?
Book a demo to discover how our brand performance analysis tools can underpin your campaigns and change your marketing game.
By Launchmetrics Content Team
The Launchmetrics content team is always on the lookout for new trends in the fashion and technology sector. We are geeks with style and lovers of good stories!
